The Snow Song

by Sally Gardner

  ‘Edith’s hair is black,’ said Flora.

  ‘It turned white on the night she stopped talking,’ said the butcher.

  Flora was about to speak when the butcher put up his hand to stop her.

  ‘Enough. No more questions. She is to have a white wedding dress. You are to make it.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Flora. ‘It’s forbidden by the village elders. You of all people know that. No one from here has ever been married in anything other than the traditional costume. The flax grown in the fields, spun here on the spinning wheels, the cloth woven, cut and stitched by hand. Edith showed me the skirt and blouse that she was going to be married in. Why would she want a modern wedding gown?’

  The question hung as heavy as the snow-filled sky.

  Cuckoo. Cuckoo.

  ‘It makes a loud noise,’ said the butcher. ‘She is to have this dress. I will pay well for it, pay your fancy price.’ He put up his collar and left, closing the yard gate behind him.

  ‘Did you know about this?’ said Flora, turning to her brother.

  The blacksmith nodded. ‘The whole village knows. When the shepherd didn’t return, Edith lost the power of speech and her hair went white overnight. Everyone says the butcher is bewitched and that the wedding dress is Edith’s doing.’

  ‘You should have told me. Do you know what happened to the shepherd?’

  Her brother sighed. ‘I went up the mountain with Misha.’

  ‘The butcher’s grandson?’ said Flora.

  ‘He’s been helping me.’

  ‘I thought he was a fool,’ said Flora. ‘Are you sure it’s wise?’

  ‘He’s a good worker. No one takes the time to listen to him. But if you don’t fluster him, shout at him or raise your fist, he works hard.’

  ‘And no doubt rushes back and tells his grandfather all that goes on here.’

  ‘No,’ said the blacksmith. ‘He loves Edith and because she wants to know what happened to the shepherd, Misha searches the mountain in hope of finding him. He tells me he’s listening for his violin. It was Misha who found the remains of the shepherd’s dog and several of the sheep. They’d strayed far too high. We rounded up the rest of the flock and took them down to the farmer. There was no sign of the shepherd. The farmer told us that Demetrius would never have abandoned his animals.’

  ‘This is wrong.’

  ‘I know. But what can we do? We thought it best not to tell anyone. Edith hasn’t said a word since the snow came. She listens but she doesn’t speak.’

  ‘She can’t marry the butcher,’ said Flora. ‘He’s as old as her father. And a brute.’

  ‘We can’t stop it,’ said her brother. ‘I’m one of the few men round here who doesn’t owe the butcher – thanks to you. What he wants, he gets. And Flora, you must be careful when you go to confession. The priest isn’t to be trusted – he and the butcher are as thick as thieves.’

  She nodded. ‘And what about the wedding gown? What do I do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Chapter Ten

  The Angel of the House

  Edith sat in the neat kitchen with its large scrubbed table, bread baking in the oven. She stared at the blue jug that her grandmother would leave out every evening filled with water. She would say it was for the angel of the house. Often as a child, Edith had woken at night certain that she saw the angel, tall and growing taller, casting a shadow over her bed.

  Her grandmother had taken these dreams seriously.

  ‘What would happen if we didn’t leave the jug out?’ Edith had asked when she was a little older and more able to make sense of things unseen.

  Grandmother said that if that was to happen, the evil one could make its way into the walls of the house. Edith thought now the only thing that had made its way into these walls was a deep sadness, a damp melancholy that refused to be defeated by the warmth of the stove. Her grandmother knew the mountain was rife with stories of the bloodless. The dread of the unknown was a bindweed of superstition that tied women to the house for fear of what might lie beyond the garden gate.

  She would start her stories with ‘What once took place and if it had never been it would not be told’.

  Once, I loved a shepherd with eyes as blue as a winter sky. He was no prince, but to me, he was a king of men. What is this life without him, a life without hope? What is life without hope? A newly dug grave. Edith wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, swallowed her wordless misery. It tasted bitter. But life went on, not caring that she was broken. She still had to clean out the pigsty and feed the pig and the chickens. Her father still demanded his supper. It mattered not that her dreams had vanished.

  Edith’s white hair and her silence were of great interest to the villagers. No one said they were sorry or asked about Demetrius; it was as if he had never been there. The only person to enquire was the cobbler’s wife, Vanda, and she, being also the butcher’s daughter, had already made it quite clear that she didn’t want a stepmother, certainly not one as young as Edith.

  Edith had no intention of being married to an old man. Her father had sucked enough of her life from her. What can I do, she asked her heart, when you are broken, when I can’t even speak in my defence? Her tongue sat unmoving, redundant in her mouth. An image of the butcher’s slab came to her: the sheep’s head, its tongue lolling out of its jaws.

  At night she dreamed of Demetrius. She saw him floating over the village, his violin resting on his chest. He reached down towards her, their fingertips nearly touching. She felt his spirit enter her, run free through her blood – and then he was gone. In all her dreams he never spoke.

  One morning, caring little for the superstition that had turned a water jug into a charm against evil, Edith picked it up, drank from it then went about her work. Later, as she refilled it from the well in the yard, she began to hear Demetrius in her head, speaking in a language without words. A language she understood.

  ‘The dead are meant to be silent, not the living, not you, my love.’

  Edith spoke to him in the same way.

  ‘Why can’t I see you? Why in dreams do you have a shape and no voice? I hardly knew you and you’re gone.’

  ‘I’m here.’

  She watched the sunlight flickering on the surface of the blue jug.

  ‘How do I live knowing I’ve lost you, and years, meaningless years, spread out before me? I’m to be buried alive, a house my coffin, a wedding ring my chain, a white dress my shroud.’

  The sound of the gate made her jump. The seamstress was brushing her boots and the hem of her dress free of the snow. She came into the kitchen, put down her basket and gathered Edith to her.

  ‘What has happened?’ Flora asked. ‘You look so pale – and your hair…’

  There was only silence.

  Edith was pleased to see Flora and at the same time dreaded the questions she would ask.

  ‘Speak to me, Edith. I don’t believe you can’t talk. Has a doctor seen you?’ Edith shook her head. ‘You’d think we were living in the Middle Ages. Next year a train will run from the capital to the town and then this village will not be so isolated.’

  Edith put the kettle on the stove and thought she should have left in the summer, gone up the mountain, found Demetrius and not cared what anyone thought. Now it was too late. Regret rubbed her raw. She took the bread from the oven. Better to be doing something, anything, rather than sit across from Flora. She patted the loaf out of the tin and sat it on the rack. The smell of the warm bread filled the kitchen.

  ‘Please speak, Edith,’ said Flora. ‘I won’t tell a soul if you do, I promise. I’m older than you by seven years and wise enough to see that your silence has a power of its own.’

  Edith wished Flora would leave.

  ‘The butcher came this morning talking nonsense about a wedding gown.’

  Why do people speak so much, thought Edith, watching Flora busy herself with her basket.

  ‘Perhaps because the dead can’t speak.’

/>   ‘I think you might be right.’

  ‘Edith – are you listening?’ said Flora. ‘You should see a doctor in town. I know a good one.’

  The idea that there was money to see the village doctor, let alone a doctor in town, nearly made Edith laugh. She put butter and jam on the table and gestured to Flora to help herself. She poured the tea, not listening. So many women live lives crushed by words.

  ‘Edith?’

  She looked up at Flora.

  ‘Do you hear what I’m saying?’

  No, because it brings me no comfort and, for me, unlike you, there’s no escape. What is it like to live in town and make enough to support yourself? The priest says that ‘seamstress’ is just another word for ‘prostitute’. I don’t think that’s your story. But there’s something – something hidden.

  ‘Was it your idea – the wedding dress?’

  Edith shook her head.

  ‘Then it was the butcher’s. But why?’ said Flora. ‘Can’t you convince him that you don’t want it?’

  Edith shook her head again.

  It was then that Edith understood something about silence. And she began to listen to every word Flora said. She was right – the butcher should have known better than to suggest a modern wedding dress. Edith hadn’t thought how much of a rebellious act against the old ways such a dress would be.

  ‘People are talking. They say you’ve bewitched the butcher. They say Demetrius was a gypsy.’

  Flora picked up her tape measure with a sigh. She took from her basket a folder of fashion plates, fine ladies with impossible shapes wearing wedding gowns. ‘White is all the fashion,’ she said as she spread the pictures before them.

  Edith looked at the pictures and saw herself as a traveller preparing for a long journey, waiting for the sound of the violin so she might put her right foot forward.

  ‘These gowns can be adapted to any design.’

  Edith nodded and without so much as a glance pointed to the fashion plate nearest her.

  ‘You don’t care, do you?’ said Flora.

  Edith shrugged. No, she didn’t care.

  ‘The world is changing,’ said Flora. ‘Why should the village elders tell us what we can wear? I’ll make you a most beautiful wedding gown.’

  The seamstress’s sewing machine was reported to the village elders. The blacksmith’s house and forge stood well away from the other houses in the village, which could only mean that whoever had heard it had gone out of their way to do so. That the seamstress was making a wedding dress for the cabinet maker’s daughter was considered by the elders enough of an outrage to act upon. The girl must have bewitched the butcher for he would never have allowed it.

  They went to the cabinet maker who was asleep. Edith had no intention of inviting them into the parlour as was the custom when dignitaries of the village paid a visit. Instead she ushered them into the kitchen. They stood together, these ancient ravens, these guardians of the old way of life that made progress almost impossible. If something hadn’t been done before there was no need for it to be done now. The butcher, the most senior elder, was not among them.

  ‘Where’s your father?’ a pencil-thin elder asked.

  Edith didn’t reply, neither did she offer them food or wine. The elders talked among themselves and then their spokesman, the miller, turned to her.

  ‘You, girl, will be married in the traditional costume of this region and nothing else. Do you hear me?’

  The six elders stared at her, awaiting an answer, and were struck by her beauty. None of them could remember her being this lovely for in the winter light she possessed an ethereal quality, a shimmer of snow-kissed skin. It was they who looked away first.

  The cabinet maker appeared in the kitchen, unshaven, his clothes dishevelled. He was frightened to see the elders there.

  ‘I’m going to stop,’ he announced. ‘The drinking. It’s just that I’ve had a lot on my…’

  The miller said, ‘We’re not here about that. We’re here about the wedding dress.’

  Edith’s father was visibly relieved.

  ‘We heard that the seamstress has been asked to make your daughter a wedding dress. We forbid it. Our ancestors laid down strict rules about dress for both men and women. This goes against all our beliefs.’

  ‘It’s not my doing,’ said the cabinet maker, shuffling towards the table. He scraped back a chair and sat down.

  ‘You must put an end to it,’ said another elder. ‘You should never have indulged your daughter in this ridiculous notion in the first place.’

  ‘I didn’t. I never would,’ mumbled her father again. He was eyeing the cupboard where the schnapps was kept.

  ‘What did he say?’ said one of the elders.

  The thin man repeated the cabinet maker’s answer.

  ‘Then whose doing was it, if not yours?’

  The question hung in the air, a ghost finding shape. The cabinet maker spoke his words clearly, so all could hear. ‘The butcher’s.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said the miller. ‘The butcher is an upstanding member of this community, a man to be respected – he would never break with tradition.’

  That Sunday the priest, being informed of what had happened, and fearing that his friend the butcher had been bewitched by the girl, took matters into his own hands with, of course, the Lord’s blessing. In the pulpit he spoke of a well-known prophecy, unashamedly addressing Edith and the seamstress.

  ‘When luxury and extravagance have spread so far over the face of the earth that everyone walks about in silken attire and when sin is no longer a shame, then the end of the world is not far off.’

  His voice filled the rafters and though no one turned to look directly at Edith she felt all eyes upon her, particularly those of the butcher’s two daughters.

  ‘Few men will remain alive in this country, not more than can find a place in the shade of an ancient oak tree.’

  Edith watched the faces of neighbours and friends as these words were spoken and it occurred to her that words were the weather by which they lived their lives; words that shaped their sense of self, stuck and stayed and grew them crooked or straight, loved or unloved. Words as changeable as the clouds that hung just as heavy on the living.

  Chapter Eleven

  Fish and Fabric

  The butcher accompanied Edith home from church in silence. He never had been a man of many words. What he wanted to say that Sunday as they walked away under the watchful eyes of the congregation was just one word, a word that described an emotion that up to this moment he hadn’t believed in. It belonged to a soppy-faced youth who trusted in happy endings. Love was not something a grown man indulged in. Yet this simple walk with Edith had for him a religious quality.

  Edith’s silence, her beauty, fascinated him. Her refusal to speak only made him want her more. Perhaps he hadn’t loved her until she became silent. Her silence made her unapproachable. She reminded him of a painted Madonna. He would go down on bended knee before her and worship this ice virgin bride. And without meaning to he let out a laugh. For a thought had come to him: he had spent a lifetime saving every penny and now he was prepared to lay it all at her feet, a carpet of coins.

  The priest had warned him. ‘There can’t be one rule for every other girl in the village and another for Edith. You’re the head of the village elders and should know better. Has the girl bewitched you? I hope for both your sakes this isn’t the case.’

  What madness had possessed him to do such a foolish thing? Unless he put a stop to this nonsense he would have to step down from his position. He realised now that Edith had outwitted him. She had no intention of speaking up, she would wear whatever she was given without protest. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would remain stubbornly silent for so long. What if she never spoke again?

  The butcher could almost hear what his dead mother would have said. Edith had put a curse on him. He’d better take care for his mother had met the devil on her way to purgatory and he wa
s waiting for her son at the crossroads, just as he had waited for her, to take them both to hell.

  He pushed the thought from his mind. He and Edith would have a child. The idea thrilled him. Her flat belly would grow round, her small breasts would fill out. He would be the first and only man she had ever lain with. This time, he told himself, I will be patient. ‘I will wait. I will change.’

  It suddenly struck him that he had said the last sentence out loud. At her house Edith stopped at the gate and for the first time looked at him.

  ‘For you I will be a better man than I was,’ he said. Her expression didn’t change. ‘I know you don’t love me but…’ Each word a stepping stone across an emotional river.

  Still her eyes didn’t leave his face until, in the yard, she opened the door and he could tell she was not going to invite him in.

  ‘I have to talk to your father,’ he said by way of an excuse. ‘He must pay the fine for not attending church.’

  He followed Edith inside. Her father was half-dressed and drunk. The butcher, ignoring the cabinet maker, watched Edith. She walked past her father, hung up her shawl, took off her hat then let down the two white plaits that were wrapped round her head and undid them. She shook them out and her hair fell about her in a thick snowfall of white that she quickly twisted into a knot. The butcher was mesmerised.

  ‘I know who has taken my daughter’s voice,’ said the cabinet maker suddenly. ‘It’s the bloodless.’

  The butcher grabbed the blubbering drunk by the arm.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow you are to go and fetch the fish for the betrothal supper.’

  ‘Fish?’ repeated the cabinet maker, finding sobriety. ‘How in this weather am I to get fish? We are all but cut off from the town.’

  ‘Fish,’ said the butcher, ‘is the traditional food for a betrothal supper. I expect nothing less.’

  And with that he left.

  The cabinet maker waited until he was sure that the butcher’s feet crunching in the snow were taking him away.

  ‘And there I was worried about the bloodless,’ he said. ‘No, it will be a fish that puts me in my grave. If only you would speak up, Edith. A word from you would stop the wedding dress being made. Stop me having to risk my life for a fish. I’ve always done my best for you and yet you do and say nothing.’